And is hopefully not stupid enough to do any such thing.
North America’s geological formations have the capacity to store 500 years of carbon dioxide emissions, according to an atlas produced by the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The North American Carbon Storage Atlas was created through the North American Carbon Atlas Partnership, a joint cross-border mapping initiative by the US Energy Department, Natural Resources Canada and the Mexican Ministry of Energy.
A website and interactive map has been released in conjunction with the hard-copy atlas. The online viewer is accessible via the NASCA website and houses data from all three countries as well as analytical tools to address carbon capture and storage projects.
According to the atlas, low case estimate puts potential capacity at 136 billion metric tons for oil and gas fields; 65 billion metric tons for coal fields; and 1,738 billion metric tons for saline reservoirs, which collectively represent 500 years of storage.
By documenting both geological storage sites and the location of 2,250 large stationary CO2 sources (see map), the atlas could help determine the potential of CCS projects, the Energy Department said. Information within the atlas combined with technology innovation can help fossil fuel-powered facilities continue to operate while reducing carbon pollution, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.
CCS technologies capture, purify and compress CO2, which is then injected into geological formations for permanent storage. The same technology also can be used for enhanced oil recovery to produce hard-to-access crude, while permanently storing the CO2 emissions.
Oh yes they are, or are they? Just think of the endless amounts of money they will receive from the government. After all they will only be doing it to save The Planet, what better cause?
Wouldn’t it be great to be in a business
that can’t be audited?
It can’t be proved or disproved that the
CO2 went into the ground, or is still
there, or made it to the atmosphere,
anyway..
The burning of fossil fuel creates a high entropy gas. Pulling out a component of that gas requires a lot of work determinable by the laws of thermodynamics. That energy cost is substantial compared to energy released. There can be no technical fix to this problem that comes from physics and not engineering. I greatly admire Secretary Chu, and I am disappointed that he misses the forest for the trees in this case.
Secretary Chu is an intellectual, in other words – a moron.
I read a recent blurb on using CO2 as a frack gas. It can be recycled almost infinitely. I consider that a much better use than just pumping it willy nilly into the ground for naught.
Oil companies have been using CO2 for tertiary recovery of oil in old fields where water recovery is no longer useful. Some of these intellectuals need to find out what is going on in the real world.